


perfect little world just went up in flames

by peterneds



Series: july fic challenge [6]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Baker Phil Lester, M/M, Pianist Dan Howell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-12 00:23:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15327663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterneds/pseuds/peterneds
Summary: it’s not something he wants to talk about, how he can’t stay with phil. he doesn’t want to talk about how phil must know, because dan pulls away whenever they get too close. whenever dan feels like he’s ready, that if phil had asked him for his heart, he’d hand it to him without question, he distances himself.phil comes to sit next to dan and rests his head in the crook of his neck, drops a kiss there, like he’s thanking dan.for what?dan wants to say.what have i done for you?





	perfect little world just went up in flames

**Author's Note:**

> i can't believe i'm writing rpf after three years  
> (it physically pained me to have to type "phandom" it. it really did)

in this perfect little world, of shops and bakeries and candle-lit dinners and twinkling fairy lights, dan's favourite thing is phil.

in this perfect world, dan observes phil, entranced by his every movement. sometimes, he breaks the bubble of the perfect world, and caresses phil's cheek. just to say, _hey, i’m here. hey, i love you._

in the perfect world phil resides not too far from dan, who works in a music shop across the street. the melodic sounds of fingers on keys had drawn him in.

the sweet smell of cinnamon buns and chocolate chip cookies are what made dan cross the street into phil's bakery, lit up with lights and decorated with soft pastel paintings.

most days, though, they meet in the middle. 

when the morning rush calms, phil brings molten lava cakes over to dan's shop, resting it atop his piano and sitting contentedly while he plays his newest piece for phil.

when he's done, he turns to find phil but phil is already walking towards him, plopping down next to dan on his bench while dan moves to make room for him. 

phil thumbs where dan's dimple forms until he smiles. he says, "that was beautiful." 

and dan, smitten, says back, "it was for you."

 

phil has stars drawn all over his bedroom.

they scatter his walls, make a pathway up to his ceiling and form a constellation when they come back down. 

when dan lays on his bed, limbs splayed out, he pats whatever part of phil he can reach and says, "hey. where'd you get the stars?" 

phil's eyes are closed and he's breathing in deeply, taking in this moment in his perfect little world. the world that consists of only him and dan. the world filled with only symphonies and harmonies and sugar-sweet icing, and dan laid out on his bed. dan being _his._

"my brother and i did it," he says, finally. "when we were younger we shared a room, and we had those glow in the dark star stickers on our ceiling. he wanted me to have a little bit of home with me when i left." 

dan's smile is soft, and phil thinks if it's were tangible it would feel like silk sheets, or cotton candy, or the softest teddy bear in the world. “that's really sweet,” he tangles his hand with phil's, even though they're at opposite ends of the bed. "can i meet him one day?" 

phil lifts his head to look down at dan. "who?" he asks.

dan squeezes phil's hand as he laughs and says, "your brother, you spoon." 

"oh," phil says. "i guess. we don't really see each other all that often." 

dan is now tracing patterns on the back of phil's hand. "why's that?" 

phil shrugs his shoulders.

"time, i guess," he says softly. "he's busier now than he was when i first left." 

"phil?" dan says, his fingers laying flat against phil's hand.

"hm?" 

"you always say you left, not moved out, or moved house," dan says. "why?" 

he shrugs again. “it wasn’t like a, ‘hey mum and dad, I wanna move to the city to open a bakery, could you help me find a place?’” he says. “they didn’t want me to leave, you know? but i did it anyway.” 

dan nods, because he knows. he knows exactly what that’s like.

“are you okay with that? i mean, that they didn’t support you.” 

phil sighs, and takes dan’s hand. “i wasn’t, for a long time. but i guess it’s okay now. i’m happy here.” 

dan smiles. “i’m glad you came.” 

phil nods and says, “yeah, so am i.” 

 

dan is incredibly conscious of the fact that he, truly, does not exist in the perfect little world. 

in his mind the world is a forest. and every time he breathes more gasoline is doused onto his skin. 

he does not belong in the perfect little world, and he knows the sand in his hourglass has nearly run out. he knows, but yet, he continues to nudge his way further into phil’s life. phil, with stars drawn on his walls. phil, who smiles at dan like he can’t contain it, like it’s involuntary. like he can’t control it. phil, who for the first time in dan's life, simply _listens_ to dan. dan plays for hours and hours and hours and phil still listens, just as intently as when he started. 

one day, phil had said, “we’ll have to get you one.” 

dan’s hands on the keys slowed. “sorry?” 

“for up there,” phil nods towards his apartment above his bakery. 

“oh,” dan says softly. “okay,” and his hands come to a stop.

it’s not something he wants to talk about, how he can’t stay with phil. he doesn’t want to talk about how phil must know, because dan pulls away whenever they get too close. whenever dan feels like he’s ready, that if phil had asked him for his heart, he’d hand it to him without question, he distances himself. 

phil comes to sit next to dan and rests his head in the crook of his neck, drops a kiss there, like he’s thanking dan. _for what?_ dan wants to say. _what have i done for you?_

 

the next day dan goes to phil’s shop before phil goes to dan’s. 

“oh!” phil says when he looks up from the cupcake he was icing. “hello there,” he smiles at dan from across the display window. 

“hi,” dan walks to kiss phil hello over the counter.

phil goes back to icing his cakes, and asks, “what are you doing over here?” 

dan shrugs as he takes a seat on the windowsill. “didn’t feel like playing today.” 

“is something wrong?” phil questions as he lifts the counter up and walks to sit beside dan, cupcake in hand. “here,” he says softly, unwrapping the tin for dan.

dan huffs and goes to take a bite, but stops midway to lean against phil. if he could, he’d drape himself across phil’s lap. if he could, he’d find a home somewhere between phil’s bones and stay there forever. 

phil’s hand travels its way up to the back of dan’s hair and rests there for a bit. “darling,” phil says, and dan sighs again.

“being a person is too tiring right now,” dan murmurs, words slurring together with the lack of effort put into them.

“mmh,” phil hums in thought and pats dan head softly. “let’s get you in bed, come on.”

dan whines but follows as phil drags him up the steps to his apartment, whines as he’s laid in phil’s bed, and whines when phil gets up to leave. 

“stay,” he whispers, reaching out for phil and patting the empty space next to him. “stay.”

phil takes one of dan’s outstretched hands and kisses the back of it. “shop’s not closed yet, bear,” he says as he kisses each of dan’s fingertips. 

“fuck the shop.” 

phil laughs, and dan peeks an eye open to see the way the crows feet form around his eyes. “you wouldn’t be up here without the shop.” 

“phil,” dan pouts. 

“i’ll come up for my lunch break,” phil promises as he leaves, keeping the door cracked an inch in case dan calls out for him. 

if he’s being honest, dan wants to call out for him the second he left. 

 

phil comes up for lunch.

he’s gone to the restaurant neighbouring dan’s shop and gotten two sandwiches for the both of them and, oddly, a glass bottle of chocolate milk.

dan, not bothering to sit up, takes the glass, presses it to his cheek and says: “what the fuck.” 

phil is sat on his desk chair, facing dan, and smiles. “you like the chocolate cakes. it’s chocolate. i thought you’d like it.” 

and it’s - it’s a ridiculous thing. it’s a ridiculous thing that phil is letting dan lay in his bed instead of doing his job because his head feels too heavy. it’s ridiculous that phil brought dan lunch without him ever asking. it’s ridiculous that phil bought dan a glass of chocolate milk, simply because he thought dan would like it.

it’s ridiculous the way dan feels a blush form on his cheeks.

he reaches out for phil again and this time phil does join him on the bed, and greets him with a single kiss on the rosey patch on dan’s cheek.

“hey,” phil says. 

dan cups his cheek as he whispers back, “hey.” 

and it’s ridiculous the way his heart warms at the simplicity of it all; the way he thinks if he let himself he could be swayed by the normalcy of phil’s bed and phil’s kiss on his cheek and phil’s choice of dinner and phil’s smile and _phil._

 

all of dan’s music has become about phil.

and, dan guesses, it’s to be expected, considering that’s who he spends most, if not all, of his time with. still, it’s an overwhelming realisation. it’s overwhelming when that light in his head clicks on and with it comes thoughts that beg to be paid attention to, to be theorised about, to be hypothesised. 

and they’re all centered around phil potentially leaving. 

it’s far from likely, considering how phil also chooses to spend the majority of his time with dan. how he makes the conscious decision every morning to cross the road to get to dan’s shop. and still, dan thinks he’s somehow convinced himself of it all. 

he guesses it also becomes evident in how fervently he’s currently kissing phil.

and hey, phil’s not complaining, but it feels more like a _goodbye_ than an _i’d kiss you for hours if you let me_ thing. 

phil pushes gently on dan’s shoulders so as to put some distance between them and he says, lips gone red, “good?” 

and dan, focused only on what his brain’s been telling him, nearly tells phil to shut up. and not a fond shut up, one that means he’s not interested in hearing what phil has to say. so, he pauses. 

it’s a beautiful thing, dan thinks. to be here with phil. it’s almost a perfect thing, and it’s a thing that he doesn’t deserve. and it’s a thing he’ll have to say goodbye to, soon. perhaps sooner than he thought. 

and he hadn’t imagined it like this - never occurred that he’d decide to leave in the middle of kissing the man he’s in love with (god. in _love_ with). 

dan leaves one last kiss on the corner of phil’s mouth, and leans in to breathe in his scent. _goodbye,_ he thinks. _you’re the only home i’ve ever known._

“wanna sleep now,” he mumbles under his breath instead, and falls back onto the bed, pulling phil with him.

and phil is warm and bright and he smiles at dan and wraps his arm around him and pulls the sheets up to cover the both of them and he’s everything dan could never  
have. 

phil kisses dan’s eyelashes onces he closes them and dan, half asleep, finds that there’s an ache somewhere in his ribcage. for phil, he knows. for the love he’ll never get to give and the life they’ll never have. 

he supposes it’s only fair, to have broken parts inside both ways. 

 

dan isn’t sitting at the piano when phil walks over to his shop in the morning. 

he asks around, the woman at the cash register and the teachers who offer lessons - but they all say they hadn’t seen him come in.

phil assumes, maybe, that he just walked in at the wrong time. but, then again, he thinks, dan’s always been there. always, without fail, every day, after the lunch rush phil can find dan sitting at that piano. 

phil shouldn’t be as concerned as he feels right now - but he is, nonetheless. he can’t help it. 

on his way out, he spots a slip of paper on top of the piano, where phil normally leaves a plate of cakes for dan. on the paper is his name written in swirly cursive and phil only realises then that he’d never seen dan’s handwriting before.

the penmanship is much less concentrated on when phil opens it, taking a seat at one of the outside tables of the restaurant next to dan’s shop. phil thinks he might have to go up to his flat to get his glasses.

dan writes, in black ink, that phil is his perfect world. and that he wants, more than anything, to exist in this perfect world without consequence, but there is simply no way for that to happen.

phil is terribly confused.

he goes on to say that he wishes he could stay, wishes he could fall asleep in phil’s bed in never leave, take phil’s hand and never have to let go. but, he says, he’s not deserving of this role in the perfect little world. 

and phil, with tears forming in his eyes, wonders why dan _had_ left his bed this morning. he wonders why he let him. 

dan continues, says it’s not phil’s fault, that there was nothing either of them could do to make the universe listen.

 

 

if phil could, he’d walk right up to the universe. he’d say, _why did you let this happen? why give us a taste of happiness and take it away? why make that mistake?_ but he can’t. and he can’t pin that question on anyone but himself.

and why _did_ he, then? why did he allow himself to believe that everything was going just as well as it should. he hadn’t realised, but dan was his perfect world, too. and he loved him. 

but the love he had subconsciously reserved for dan was now to sit in a canister, out when it should be kept cold, to go bad in the sunlight. icing that melted. a heart that’s wasted.

he doesn’t know how dan can make the decision to leave. not just phil, but his shop. and it’s another one of those things phil realises too late: he’d never been to dan’s flat. he is, in the worst of ways, helpless. 

for some time following the reading of the letter, he still drops off dan’s molten lava cakes. just to see if, this time, dan will be where he should be. 

most times he knows the lady at the cashier moves them for the other workers to have, but one day, someone is occupying dan’s space on his bench. 

they don’t look up when phil rests the cake atop the piano. phil doesn’t know who they are. phil doesn’t _want_ to.

eventually, he stops. he bakes the cakes one last time and eats one himself, and wraps the others up to be kept in the freezer. a symbol, he thinks. of remembrance. of the boy who used to be his. 

it’s closure enough, but not in the way he had wanted. occasionally, he’ll catch himself glancing up from his cookbook or cookies he’s adding finishing touches on to see if dan is looking back at him. sometimes, he thinks, if he tried hard enough, he could imagine the way dan’s piece for phil sounded. the way his curls felt against phil’s fingertips, and the way dan used to reach for him. 

when he lays in his bed at night, he can’t find it in himself to look at the stars on his walls. he can’t find it in himself to sleep on dan’s side. and if his dreams lasted a second longer, dan wouldn't have left that morning. he’d be here, next to phil. like he _should_ be.

**Author's Note:**

> my depression said hey your really good and well thought out idea of posting something every day in july? fuck that. 
> 
> so here we are. 
> 
> i'm gonna try to post as many as i Can, so this is being changed to lots of fics in july rather than One Every Day 
> 
> anyway my first dnp fic ! hate those fucking losers so much i'm honestly really scared to post this bc this fandom is SCARY 
> 
> let me know if you enjoyed this leave a comment for my suffering ! 
> 
> xoxo alex see u next time tumblr is hcllnd twitter is peterneds
> 
> (oh the title is from one of dan or phil's old tweets i can't remember which) 
> 
> (ps i wrote this originally in italics and i'm not sure if i actually like it that way but i'm too lazy to go back and edit it all so. deal with it)


End file.
